Aka “that damn fox mount”. Finally just now got this, after 9 months of trying. At first, I religiously did my Nightfallen caches, and farmed up the mana every time withered training was up. I got every toy and pet, but never any fox. Though it seemed like everyone else in the game had it, several people in my guild were also members of the No Fox Club. I started taking every eligible alt whenever Nightfallen was up, but after taking 9 characters 3 times I was over it. I finally got it when I did Nightfallen dailies out of frustration with not being able to find any treasure chests for the weekly on my warlock.

I didn’t really feel happy or excited, just relieved, and annoyed that it took so long. I feel bad for the people who still don’t have it. Who thinks this is a good system? Why does RNG permeate every single aspect of this expansion? If I work for nine months, I feel like that should be rewarded. My PVP prestige mounts didn’t take that long. They were a grind, but I could look and see exactly how much further I had to go, and I could choose whether or not I wanted to work toward them on a particular day. No feeling of, if I don’t do it today I might miss out. A while back I started working on the sewer rat as well. Same thing. I’m about halfway now, I know that eventually I’ll get it if I keep at it. And I bet it won’t take nine months.

(Nice typo on the relic too lol)

I had to do a couple days’ worth of stupid missions before I actually got the mount.

Legion is less than a year old but personally, I’ve been bored with it for a long time now. Others in my guild finally feel the same way, and we are on a break until the new raid comes out. Even in Warlords I didn’t feel this detached this early, and remarks from the devs about how they are happy with the game’s direction have me really worried. I think it’s very likely that this is the last expansion I will buy. Flying not being available from the start is a biggie for me, as well as the amount of just pointless busywork and the focus on random rewards versus being able to work toward what I want. I still enjoy RP, and I can collect mounts and transmog appearances, but I have a feeling that’s going to be the extent of my involvement with WoW unless things change in a major way for the better. I had a bad feeling about both Warlords and Legion, and I turned out to be right on both of them, really not willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt for a third time.

I actually installed Inquisition again, and if you remember how much I hated that game, it’s saying something that I’d rather play it than Legion. I made some new characters, but I keep going back to my original Inquisitor because I like her the best. I may end up buying the Trespasser DLC, because it has the actual story ending, I haven’t decided yet. I’m not too interested in the other two unless I can get them on sale, because they’re just “explore a new zone” basically, one of which being the Deep Roads. Yech!

Also playing SWTOR as usual, one of my relatives recently picked the game up again so it’s been kind of fun doing things with them. I wish I had more time to devote to the raids there.

I finally finished my last class campaign today, which was Priest. It was actually one of the less painful ones, as far as requirements go. They definitely varied both in amount of work/gold required and story quality. I’m pretty disappointed that Priest and Paladin share exactly the same ending scenario!

Besides the lore stuff, I wanted the titles for each class, though they aren’t currently account-wide it’s my hope that they will be eventually. It’d be really nice if the class hall transmogs were as well, I don’t have any duplicate 110s so I can’t check. In addition, the amount of grinding required for those is pretty absurd right now too — for example, Exalted with Nightfallen for one of the pieces. Yeah, not happening.

I still don’t really care for the whole class hall thing, it feels a lot like busy-work, and it’s an immense hurdle to alt playing. There’s absolutely no way I’m going to level the rest of my 100s unless the requirements are eased considerably. That’s not even touching gearing, rep, or professions either. Those are just going to have to wait for the next expansion.

This place is awful. It’s my own fault for suggesting it, I know. Vallindra wanted somewhere warm, well it’s certainly that. “Warm” is misleading. It’s so hot that I can feel every part of me sweating in my robes. Sand gets into every conceivable crack, whether you want it to or not. At Hethurin’s suggestion, I bought a hat to protect from the sun, while it looks ridiculous I am glad I did. Magister Firewind’s doesn’t cover his ears, and already by the first night they were painfully burned. There are snakes, scorpions, and massive spiders. I’m told they seek shelter in shoes at night. In sharp contrast to the heat of the day, at night it’s quite cold and we need heavy blankets. The only food we have to eat are dried fish, which is tough and salty and terrible. Vallindra thought to bring some fruit, but it won’t last long. Hopefully some traders will pass by the outpost soon. It is my hope that all of this discomfort will be worth it in the end, and so far it seems promising.

We sleep during the hottest hours of the day, and venture out in the cool of night. It’s a bit more dangerous, due to the sand worms, but they haven’t given us much trouble yet. Magister Firewind suggested that we butcher and eat one if it should attack us. I can’t even imagine what worm meat must taste like.

While we couldn’t see any demons from the Reliquary camp, it did not take us long to find some. More interesting are the structures, because they are large enough that they appear to have been present for some time, but I don’t see how that is possible. Do they have some means to move them via portals? It’s something I’ve never seen before. I made sketches of the structures; there are also large flying air-ships overhead. It’s difficult to see them well in the night sky, but I have done my best to sketch them.

And there are new species, as I had hoped. There are slender, robed demons that are skilled casters and appear to keep lesser demons enslaved. I suggested that these ones be named after Vallindra, but I can’t tell if she was amused or not. We observed a larger species of imp, apparently similar in all ways to its smaller cousins, aside from size. Though slighter of build, they stand as tall as an elf, which is unsettling to say the least. After a few failed attempts, we aided Magister Firewind in binding one. Its name is Grembahl. I do not know if he intends to bring it home with him or not; if so I suspect that his present imps will not like the arrangement very much. I have selected some larger species that I would like to study more in-depth, in addition to the Vallindra demons of course.

I dislike having the blood knight here, aside from possibly exposing our studies, there is the very real danger that he will carelessly kill something I’m in the middle of studying. That’s the reason they agreed to send him here, so he can learn how to kill them and report back to the others. I don’t see what’s so complicated about it, but that’s blood knights for you. Binding and guiding them is much more rewarding, and delicate. Our knowledge will also help strengthen the wards back in the Ghostlands, to keep the school and rangers safe. As much as I enjoy studying them, I’d prefer demons weren’t roaming loose all over the Ghostlands.

I’m only level 104 and ready to be done with leveling. The zones and models are very nice (with the exception of my artifacts and braided-ass bear form), but the questing still suffers from the on-rails, Chosen One, no-choices that plagued WoD. There isn’t ever a single quest that gives you so much as a conversation option to say or do anything besides what is presented to you. Even if it only changed the story in minor ways, this would go a long way toward putting the “RP” back into MMORPG. One that particularly bothered me was in the aftermath of the Horde’s Broken Shore scenario. There wasn’t even an option to refuse what I was told to do — I’m sure my character isn’t the only one who might take exception with what was going on.

Running around on the ground sucks. Hunting for cave entrances sucks. Trying to find the one path that takes you where you want to go sucks. I’d hoped they figured this out by now, but it seems not.

I think one of my biggest barriers to enjoying Legion is the alt thing, that I’ve touched on before. Legion is extremely unfriendly to alts, due to the amount of grinding and repetition required. To even step into the new zones, you need to: do the Broken Shore scenario (I’ve heard that you can skip it on alts, but I don’t know if this is true. I didn’t have the option when I took my Horde mage, but this was prior to launch), do the Dalaran introduction quests, and then do your artifact scenario and set up your class hall. These vary in length depending on class. They do seem to have been properly scaled though, I (a very bad mage) was able to do mine with really awful gear. And then, if you want to do any dungeons, you need Friendly rep with each questing faction, which means you need to quest through every zone. On every alt. Then, on top of that, Blizzard thinks everyone enjoys running the same dungeons over and over and over (and over… and over…) so you get to do that, too. I hated Mythic dungeons in WoD, and only did them to complete the achievement, so I’m already feeling the dread close in at the prospect of being stuck in these awful dungeons for two years. I really haven’t enjoyed any dungeon since Wrath, and the WoD ones were especially awful for the most part. My other big thing is removal of player choice and agency, the game telling you how important you are at every turn. (Seriously, the next NPC who calls me Archdruid is getting punched.) It especially loses its impact when you’re in the class hall, surrounded by 50 other super important world-savers. They really are just re-skinned garrisons, too. Yeah, there’s other people there, but the mechanics are still the same, and are still un-fun. I can’t get rid of followers I don’t like, nor do they have any interaction outside of when you recruit them. Well, mine showed up once in a scenario to be useless and die. You must accept the weapon and weapon type you are given, which you must use for the duration of the expansion. Many spells and abilities were taken away, or made into talents.

Everyone else seems to like it right now, but everyone liked WoD at first, too. I guess we’ll see in a few months.

I’m spending the last day of Warlords taking alts to the invasions for the easy XP. I’ve already managed to get all of the 90-somethings on my active account up to 100 that way in the past couple of weeks. Also working on getting the lowbie RP alts to 20 (the starter account cap) so they can at least ride and use the yak mount for transmog.

I am definitely not sad to see WoD go at all, it’s certainly the most unhappy I have been with WoW. The only reason I’m still here at all is the other people I play with, whether my two raid groups or my RP buddies. I do have some attachment to my character, too, it would be very hard to give him up after 10 1/2 years. I was cautiously hopeful for lots of neat Draenei lore and story possibilities, but none of them really ever happened, and the “alternate Draenor” concept made it messy and confusing for existing characters (especially Draenei), storywise.

Unfortunately I haven’t been very impressed with Legion either. So much so that I barely spent any time at all on the beta, because I just wasn’t interested enough to log in. Sure, the zones and models are pretty, and — very importantly — it’s not about orcs, but I am not sure if the core systems are a good idea. For one, I don’t like artifacts, at all. The class changes are overall a negative to me, many classes and specs I formerly enjoyed I can’t even stand at all now, and every single class I feel that I’m missing things I used before due to the prune. I am also really not happy about being forced into mythic dungeons. I didn’t enjoy them in WoD, I very much doubt I will enjoy them in Legion either. And while I don’t really dislike Demon Hunters, they are not something I was clamoring for and will be nothing more than another alt to run old raids with. Maybe if they’d had a ranged spec, but I’m not sure. I’m taking a “wait and see” approach, perhaps I’m wrong and I’ll totally love Legion but I kinda doubt it. I am certainly keeping my SWTOR account active, though.

I guess I will miss logging into free gold on my alts. I had hoped I could leave them parked in garrisons for two years, but it was not to be. I mean, they’ll still be in their garrisons, just they won’t be getting any money from it. At this point, because of the artifact nonsense, I have plans to level only one or two alts. (It was only one, but fire mage is tempting me!) Otherwise, my main Legion activity will probably be transmog farming with my stable of 100s. So pretty much what I’ve been doing all summer anyway.